Today is the Memorial of St. John of the Cross. He is one of the great Christian Mystics and considered a Doctor of the Church (a great Teacher of the faith who's insights are considered good spiritual food for the whole Body). I have gained a good bit of insight from reading some of his writings over the years. I haven't read a lot, but you don't have to. It gets deep pretty quick.
He was a Spanish monk/priest of the Carmelite order, born in 1542. His spiritual director of sorts was another famous Mystic, St. Teresa of Avila (you need to read her as well). Something about those Spaniards.
One of the more valuable things that has stuck with me for a long time that I read was a comparison of the process of spiritual growth and maturity to that of a Mother weening her young child from her breast - how she put bitter herbs there and stopped carrying the child, putting him down to begin to walk on his own little feet. This is a difficult but necessary process we all have to go through at some point in order to become spiritually mature adults.
Here's a selection of a selection from today's Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours - not the most pleasant thoughts these, but definitely some truth to it that we need to understand:
We must then dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides.
For this reason the apostle Paul said of Christ: In him are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God. The soul cannot enter into these treasures, nor attain them, unless it first crosses into and enters the thicket of suffering, enduring interior and exterior labors, and unless it first receives from God very many blessings in the intellect and in the senses, and has undergone long spiritual training.
Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross. –From a spiritual Canticle by St. John of the Cross
The thicket of the cross - that'll undo you right there. Not without God's Grace, though, or we would certainly be destroyed by it. We should certainly know that our destruction is not God's intention for us. This cross, these crosses, are only for our re-creation. St. John, ora pro nobis.
"Then, if we cannot as yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike. Herein we cannot possibly do amiss." John Wesley
"Keep your eyes on the crucifix, for Jesus without the cross
is a man without a mission, and the cross without Jesus
is a burden without a reliever." Fulton J. Sheen
"...I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be
completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self." Henri Nouwen
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Today is the Memorial of St. John of the Cross. He is one of the great Christian Mystics and considered a Doctor of the Church (a great Teacher of the faith who's insights are considered good spiritual food for the whole Body). I have gained a good bit of insight from reading some of his writings over the years. I haven't read a lot, but you don't have to. It gets deep pretty quick.
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